by Staci HainesOvercome sexual trauma with gentle, transformative, and empowering techniques from the fantastic Healing Sex book. Transcend the limits of talk therapy with a sophisticated mind-body-spirit approach that allow women survivors of sexual assault (of all orientations, single, or coupled) to reclaim their own desires by reconnecting with their physical selves. This edition is an updated version of the formerly titled Survivor's Guide to Sex by sex educator/somatic healer Staci Haines.

I cannot recommend this book enough. I found it honest, articulate, comforting and profoundly insightful. It named so many of the things I experience that I didn't understand and was scared by, and in addition to that, it helped me feel compassion for these parts of myself. Basically this book resulted in a profound self awakening. I found it not just incredibly useful in understanding my sexuality but also (and so importantly!) it encourages you to seek out positive sexual experiences and discover (or rediscover) your own needs and desires - which is why I'm on babeland looking at vibrators right now. :) Even though I read it several years ago I keep my copy handy and refer back to it when I'm finding it hard to maintain boundaries or am feeling triggered by something. Sex is still complicated, but with this book I feel like my sexuality is mine to explore, appreciate and delight in. As a side note if you are just starting to work through your trauma I would recommend pacing yourself and reading it slowly. I spent two months just processing the feelings I had from the first chapter. Also, there is an awesome chapter for partners of survivors to read, my boyfriend found it really useful, and it helped him understand what I was going through.

The goal of healing sex is to find means to help sexually traumatized women become sexually empowered. Written by a lecturer, reading the book feels like being in a support group, which may be good for someone who starts the healing process from scratch. But it may not be appreciated by someone who has been through most of the healing already and wants to simply feel better about the past or come to terms with a sexual assault (like me). The content is very good, sexually informative, helpful and covers a lot of topics, but it should have been edited more to fix idea organization and remove some repetitions, whether lexical or in terms of content across chapters.